Derpman/Derpman Diaries Chronology
These serve as a record of Derpman's exploits in the course of Derpman Diaries. The 'Derpman Diaries' themselves are important because it serves as records detailing his alternate reality jumping capabilities (the most significant jumps called 'Divergences' being mostly accidental) as a result of Golden Time and Time Magic. For Derpman, he needs them to maintain his sanity. Origin The story begins with a young man whose name and history he has tried very hard to disassociate from himself before becoming the Derpman. The young man made video games for a modest startup company and lived an ambivalently uneventful life. He was known among friends as a fortune-teller whose primary method of divination was the tarot. However, he was a bit ashamed of this, and would simply call it 'just a hobby' and mutter some psychological reasoning behind his readings. He believed in and knew of the supernatural, but was afraid to open his eyes and peer squarely into the darkness. Thus, his life was one of self-imposed mediocrity - he knew there was an eldritch existence behind the mundane; the chaos hidden by the weak system of laws we call reality - but did nothing and used that very same flawed system to rationalize his experience. He was a man who enjoyed his existence of sleeping, doing whatever it took to remain in the dream. Fate eventually forced its hand, and he came face to face with a phantasmal existence. A vengeful specter of a street urchin child (or several, he's unsure now) appeared before him as he crossed a certain intersection at the wrong time of night. Before disappearing, the specter gleefully uttered its curse : If the young man crossed this same intersection 3 more times, he would die. Of course, for this man, who had survived this long by hiding in the framework of common sense, his natural course of action was to rationalize what had occurred as some kind of hallucination. Spooked, but with no frame of reference with which to deal with the situation, he simply resolved never again to cross that intersection and to continue his facade of a mediocre life. No matter what, he thought to himself, he will not let himself enter 'that world'. But fate is a cruel mistress, and he found himself crossing the intersection the very next day. Despite changing his usual commute, a traffic situation forced his chosen jeepney to use an alternate route that crossed that same intersection. There, he saw ghostly children smirk at him as they played amidst the speeding traffic. "Two more times," they reminded him through rotting teeth. Now strongly reminded of how powerless common sense was before the unreal, the young man enacted a dramatic shift from his normally lackadaisical routine. After work, he began to ask questions from policemen, security guards and beggars in the area about street urchin children killed in that specific intersection. The young man found that no such information existed, but gleaned some interesting facts instead. The beggars and security guards recognized the children in his description, and said that one day, they disappeared. Their disappearance coincided with the construction of a nearby railway tunnel that had completed at around that time. He began to reconnect with old friends who had introduced him to 'that world' in the first place, and also asked for their help. Many of them were now also leading interesting lives. From them he gleaned additional information about the nature of ghosts and how they are 'anchored' to certain places significant to their lives or deaths. A friend reminded him of his 'practice', a 'craft' which he had abandoned because he wasn't pleased with its results. He decided that, now armed with some knowledge, he wanted to free himself from the curse by going to the tunnel to find more clues. This effort merely frustrated him, as there was nothing he could find that any other amateur could not. He surmised that he would need construction tools or heavy machinery to find anything of value. Prior to that expedition, he had researched past newspapers for any accidents involving children in the tunnel and found that there were none. It was a wasted effort. Driven quite mad from exasperation, he decided to confront the specter of the intersection to glean more clues. As he crossed the intersection the second time, the specter gleefully reminded him that he only had one more chance before his inevitable death. Its tone suddenly changed to anger, when the young man asked why he, in particular, was cursed. The specter assailed him with phantom blows that marked his flesh, and he almost died because its assault pushed him into the path of speeding vehicles. The spirit cried out "Death to Ezekiel Tang! Death to Ezekiel Tang!" the entire time, before disappearing abruptly as he left the area of its curse. Ezekiel Tang. He now had a name. Had his crazy gamble paid off? Now his side research had become a full blown obsession he wanted to see to the end. He began to take days off from work, and hid his activities from his family. There was something urging him forward that he didn't quite understand... or maybe he just refused to understand it. He would later find that the corporation behind the railway tunnel's development was led by a CEO who also coincidentally shared the young man's portly size, swarthy complexion, and east asian features. He then also learned of the rumors surrounding the man : dark rituals, child sacrifices, deals with demons, and vampirism. The name of this CEO? Ezekiel Tang. However, all the young man had at the moment was conjecture. He had nothing actionable regarding 'Mr. Tang'. He needed proof. He needed more clues. He needed to know about the person that had caused this problematic curse. And just like that, the following evening he somehow found himself face to face with Ezekiel Tang. He had decided to investigate one of the branch offices of Tang's construction company. However, the CEO paid him no mind, being in a hurry to get somewhere. He rode in a convoy of vehicles. Seeing this as an opportunity that offered no second chances, the young man immediately called a cab to pursue the convoy of vehicles.